In the 2013 Sci-Fi thriller Gravity, Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut who gets stranded in outer space in a capsule following a catastrophe in which she is the apparent lone survivor.
Cold, frightened, and alone, she resigns herself to her fate and shuts down the cabin's oxygen supply to commitsuicide. As she begins to lose consciousness, she is visited (or is she?) by the character played by George Clooney, whom she believed to be dead. He gives her a pep talk and a survival plan, and then he leaves. She eventually realizes that Clooney’s visit did not really happen, but the experience gave her the strength to continue on and by following his plan she is able to escape what seemed to be a hopeless situation.
Although the movie may have been science fiction, the encounter that Bullock’s character had with a being that appears in a moment of desperation is a human experience far more common than you might think. Psychologists refer to this experience as the “Sensed Presence.”
The sensed presence usually happens to individuals who have become isolated in an extreme or unusual environment, often when high levels of stress are involved. These individuals report a perception or feeling that another person is there to help them cope with a hazardous situation. The vividness of the presence can range from a vague feeling of being watched to a clearly perceived, seemingly flesh and blood entity such as George Clooney’s character inGravity. This entity might be a god, spirit, an ancestor, or someone who is personally known to the observer. Sensed presences usually appear in environments with little variation in physical and social stimulation; low temperature is also a common ingredient.
Possible explanations for a sensed presence include the motion of boats, atmospheric or geomagnetic activity, and altered sensations and states of consciousness induced by changes in brain chemistry triggered by stress, lack of oxygen, monotonous stimulation, or a buildup ofhormones. Environmental psychologist Peter Suedfeld also thinks that what we do cognitively changes under these circumstances and may play a role. Suedfeld proposed that in ordinary life we spend most of our time attending to and processing external, ambient stimuli from the physical world surrounding us. However, persistent exposure to stimuli that we are evolutionarily unprepared to process or a lack of change in our surroundings may cause us to focus more within ourselves, which most of us are much less experienced at doing. Most likely, the experience of the sensed presence is the result of many of these factors interacting at once.
Some of the most compelling descriptions of sensed presences come from lone sailors who also experience hallucinations and out-of-body experiences. In one famous incident, Joshua Slocum, the first person to circumnavigate the globe single-handedly, swore that he saw and spoke with the pilot of Columbus’s ship the Pinta. He claimed that the pilot steered his boat through heavy weather as Slocum lay ill with food poisoning. Many other startling, vivid examples of such apparitions reported by sailors, mountain climbers, and polar explorers are described in a 1987 article by Suedfeld & Mocellin. These include recurring reports by polar explorers that they felt as if someone was following them on their treks, Mt. Everest climbers stranded in snow holes hallucinating rescuers, and survivors of sinking ships counting extra persons in their lifeboats.
Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
Although sensed presences are most frequently reported by people in weird or dangerous places, it is not unreasonable to assume that such experiences can happen in more mundane surroundings. For example, grievingindividuals who have lost a loved one on whom they depended greatly may shut themselves off from social contact with others and rarely leave their homes. Theloneliness and isolation coupled with high levels of stress and unchanging sensory stimulation might very well produce the same biological conditions that could trigger a “visit” from the recently departed.
The phenomenon of the sensed presence may account for some religiousexperiences. Such episodes often occur following extended periods of meditationand internal reflection and may be facilitated by unusual and intense physical stimulation. Early religious figures such as Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed all reportedly met supernatural beings while wandering in the desert; indeed, fasting, prolonged meditation, and stimulation of the body through pain and fatigue are part and parcel of most religions.
Many societies have included a period of isolation and unusual environmental stimulation as a rite of passage fromadolescence to adulthood. The transcendental altering of consciousness is an important part of the experience, and physical hardship and torture are often important ingredients. In this ritual, known as a “Vision Quest” or a “Spirit Quest,” seekers hope to encounter a spirit or being that will provide them with guidance and advice. In some Native American tribes, a young man would also receive his adult name from this being during his Vision Quest. These spirit quests involved solitude in harsh environments or intense sensory bombardment (for example, drumming, sweating, chanting, dancing) in a confined area. Both approaches to the quest included starvation, thirst, sleeplessness, and torture as a means of further altering arousal levels and conjuring up an encounter with a spirit.
The sensed presence is a very real, perceptual experience for those individuals who have witnessed it, and it can be very difficult to convince them that it is anything other than what they believe it to be. When evaluating self-reports from individuals who have had an extraordinary experience ranging from an alien abduction to a visit from a supernatural being, it may be difficult to know how to proceed. There are really only three possibilities:
- The event really happened, just as the person has reported.
- The person truly believes that the event has happened, but it has not.
- The person is fabricating a story for some reason.
The best we can do under the circumstances is to evaluate the relative probability of each of these occurrences and choose the one that appears most likely.
For further reading::
Furst, P. T. (1977). “High states” in cultural-historical perspective. In N. W. Zinberg (Ed.), Alternate states of consciousness. New York: The Free Press.
McAndrew, F. T. (1993). Environmental psychology. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Suedfeld, P. (1980). Restricted environmental stimulation: Research and clinical applications. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Suedfeld, P., & Mocellin, J. S. P. (1987). The “sensed presence” in unusual environments. Environment and Behavior, 19, 33-52.
Weil, A. T. (1977). The marriage of the sun and the moon. In N. E. Zinberg (Ed.),Alternate states of consciousness. . New York: The Free Press.
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